There are huge differences. We have a TINY membership, and TINY traffic compared to Aeclectic. Thousands of people look at threads there.

I can't remember more than one or two complaints here, and this was years ago. Huck, I don't know why you think that Aeclectic would be interested in changing the rules for the Tarot History section there? Do you think they think it is a value to the forum to have it? If anything, I would imagine the desire is to have it MORE like the rest of AT, not less. The only reason there are images allowed in the History section is that JMD and I pushed for it for the "Compare and Contrast" threads as an educational benefit. There tends to be a more relaxed hand towards moderation, I think, only because JMD pushed for that from the start, and the moderators since then have always been caught in between the two sides... and tried to allow as much as possible. But I really can't imagine them creating a new set of rules just for the History section.

The Tarot will lose all its vitality for one who allows himself to be side-tracked by its pedantry. - Aleister Crowley

Clearly we could add a "sticky" or whatever it is called that AT had, "Where to start, what to read"

Along with what you tried, the consensus bits, a Tarot History FAQ... why did it fail last time? People arguing about the self-proclaimed authority and attitude of the so-called experts, rather than being open-minded, as they should be, about alternative points of view. Everybody is an expert, Tarot is more about feeling than thinking, you don't know everything, it's not impossible even though there's no evidence for it so it should be considered, my feelings are hurt now I'm an adult I don't need some self-proclaimed expert telling me what to think... I think Rosanne was one of the worst, but Steve got pissed off frequently enough as well... but at least there is no censorship or being treated like children here. We are not here to "all get along and play nicely". Most of us do, but sometimes our tempers flare, we snap, or, as it is most the time, something is misunderstood and it leads to a fight.

It goes back to what you said - most people really aren't interested in the true history, they want to indulge a fantasy. When history slaps them in the face, they run to mommy to tell (in AT), or make a bigger and bigger stink (like it was here a few times over the years) until both parties just give up.

I don't think it's as bad as all that! I think a lot of people may find the historical threads somewhat interesting, and truly, may not feel they have enough knowledge to contribute to the threads, and would hate to see them disappear entirely. I agree, there is a major difference between watching the thread, and moving to the next level of actively participating by at least asking questions if not contributing information. One of the common complaints is that the historical area makes people look stupid if they don't already have the level of knowledge. I don't think that's true myself, I think we generally always welcome new people and encourage questions. It's the ones who don't ask questions but instead come in to convert people to a personal crackpot theory that we tend to pull out the acid for.

Should there be a beginners section here?

Yeah, sorry. I know, I know if I post as frequently as I like, openly and without carefully and painstakingly measuring my words against as many possible sources of misunderstanding as I can imagine, I will not make many friends. Instead I post little, tight little nuggets of substance - usually - and avoid expressing my feelings openly. We all look the same when we start getting emotional - it opens the door to other people getting emotional, and before you know it, it's just a big old shout and cry-fest and it has to either run itself dry or get stopped by force. Running itself dry is not a bad idea, actually.

Then there are evil people who will take it to the next level and threaten legal action if you don't stop taunting them. Those people have to go.

I'm not out to eviscerate people. I just want sincerity and honesty, and it is hard to come to by in the Tarot History world. It really annoyed me when people write about the cost of the books for Tarot history, impossible for "mere mortals", and all that.

Shit, it will cost less a thousand dollars TOTAL to get everything decent ever written about Tarot History, in every language, English, Italian and French. That's what most people are willing to pay for a course in whatever alternative discipline for a weekend or a short vacation somewhere - or, more pointedly, for their Tarot deck collection.

The books in English cut the price to half, and Game of Tarot is half of that. Game of Tarot will cost no more than 300 dollars, which is 10 to 15 tarot decks. You can usually find it for cheaper once you start looking for a couple of months anyway.

So yes, I'm grumpy. I want sincere people to really study Tarot history - and iconography! - and I DON'T like bullshit posturing and whining attitudes. Fuck your feelings, if you are interested in truth, you'll crawl through shit to get it.

robert wrote:There are huge differences. We have a TINY membership, and TINY traffic compared to Aeclectic. Thousands of people look at threads there.

I can't remember more than one or two complaints here, and this was years ago. Huck, I don't know why you think that Aeclectic would be interested in changing the rules for the Tarot History section there? Do you think they think it is a value to the forum to have it? If anything, I would imagine the desire is to have it MORE like the rest of AT, not less. The only reason there are images allowed in the History section is that JMD and I pushed for it for the "Compare and Contrast" threads as an educational benefit. There tends to be a more relaxed hand towards moderation, I think, only because JMD pushed for that from the start, and the moderators since then have always been caught in between the two sides... and tried to allow as much as possible. But I really can't imagine them creating a new set of rules just for the History section.

I'd some decent communications in earlier conflicts, which helped, that after a crisis some time ago things went better with Aeclectic. So I think, it's not an anonymous apparatus, which can't be moved. That's not a sure communicative relation as between us, but it's possibly something, which works. And anyway ... reality is, that there is not much between us and the top of Tarot history in the world. And a gigantic Tarotforum like Aeclectic with some feeling for quality should decide against the participation of high decorated Tarot historians? Wouldn't this be a "bad business" decision?
Well, they don't see the high decorations, cause they don't know Tarot history, but they are fact. And peu a peu the fact will become visible, also to them. Who's the top of the world in Tarot History after Michael Dummett? There's Andrea Vitali, Franco Pratesi and Girolamo Zorli as productive authors in Italy. Andrea Vitali and Franco Pratesi are very close to Trionfi.com, Andrea cooperates since recently intensively with Michael Howard (MikeH), Franco Pratesi publishes at Trionfi.com and Girolamo is active in this Forum. And all are happy about the cooperation. Depaulis is a great name in France and active as chief of the IPSC. But the Tarot History authors of the recent past in the IPCS Journal are Depaulis, Franco Pratesi and our Ross. Our Marcos is likely the next great Spanish author. Marco Ponzi makes mainly translations, and Michael J. Hurst has his favored role as the grey eminence. Who else is considered a great author in Tarot History? John McLeod is important for rules. And I'm the little Tarot History giant in Forums. Who else is REALLY active and somehow relevant? You've made this Forum and Jean-Michel David has his activities. Surely there are other important authors, but what happens to them, when they don't participate in the rapid interactions in the forums or are related to somebody active in forums? They don't participate in the progress. And we have around us other talents, who also play their role, kwaw, Pen etc..
The email-list and forum-technology has changed the rules of the world, and we have profited from it in matters of Tarot history ... that's the simple mystery.
So we are somebody and not nobody ... no need to hide our merits. And if Aeclectic wants something from us ... we should remember this. "Selbstbewusstsein" ... self-confidence, and beside that, we're a group and we keep together. ... .-) ... and so that's really difficult with us.

I love that one: "The statement that all these ideas are speculations "for which there are no facts" sounds a bit condescending."

The statement that we might not know stuff... it sounds rather... what? Self-aware.

Swiryn doesn't recognize any distinctions, so the idea that fact-based blather might be different than fact-free blather is offensively constraining. That ties to your earlier post. I know you've already tugged a forelock for seeming so negative, but... I think that you were exactly correct.

"They" is Tarotists, that is. Most, the vast, vast majority, are people who consider themselves marginal, alternative, smarter than the rest of the stupid herd. Most are not used to being students, to sit and listen, to read and study, to think, to have discipline in thinking, to be wrong most of the time, to do practice until it makes perfect.

So - the very form of the statement "I don't know enough to say anything, so I don't" shows how the poster thinks. They don't have questions, they just want to state their opinion. And after that, to have their intelligence affirmed. They are not used to criticism in such a warm alternative environment, with friends, like Tarot is supposed to be.

So those of us who claim to know something, so called "historians", "experts", big-wig know-it-alls, are really just standing in for the same society that rejects them and their superior intuitive insight. We don't belong there, we are THE ESTABLISHMENT.

Of course, that DOES sound elitist and condescending. Studying hard, taking the tests seriously, repeating what the books said instead of just making stuff up and playing around, and trying to get good marks instead of talking to our friends about more interesting topics... not fun.

Where's the self-esteem and personal empowerment there?!

On the other hand, i.e., my POV, experts are COOL! The people who know vastly more than I do (like you and Huck, to name a couple obvious ones who have answered "Here!" for this class session) are a phenomenal resource. You've done SO much work so that I don't have to -- assuming that I'm willing to accept your findings and conclusions. I would never have known much about Tarot history if it were not for Dummett, and the other playing-card historians who followed him. That fat nasty $300 textbook is for Intro to Tarot History 101a, first course, first semester. The good news is that you also use the same book every semester after that.

The point is, paying obeisance to Tarot historians is not a burden, it is a gift. It is what allows me to NOT be a Tarot historian. Years ago, the estimable (jk) challenged me to debate some point or other. I half-heartedly offered the historians' view, but he insisted that I defend my own. I tried to explain to him that I had no personal opinion, because I was a consumer of history rather than a producer. I judge expertise in general and specific conclusions in particular as best I can, but in terms of history I'm always deferring to someone or other, "The Man". That's why I stick up for some of the old guys, whether Hind and Gombrich and Panofsky in art history, or Moakley, Dummett, and even O'Neill in terms of Tarot writings.

So your comments about it being a kind of countercultural sensibility seems apt in that sense, as well as in the obvious fact that most Tarot enthusiasts are likely to suffer from New Age it's-all-good syndrome: while rejecting mainstream ideas on principle, they reject nothing else. That's why, for example, Umberto Eco laments the Gnostic/Hermetic/Postmodern approach to meaning: "the glory of the reader is to discover that texts can say everything, except what their author wanted them to mean".

Directing that POV back toward the online fora... bring out the dunce caps. Some of the children need to sit facing the corner for a little time-out.

Best regards,
Michael

P.S. Unlike Tarot history, in terms of the iconography of Tarot, I am of course both an avid consumer and producer.

We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.

mjhurst wrote:
P.S. Unlike Tarot history, in terms of the iconography of Tarot, I am of course both an avid consumer and producer.

Yes you are - I say so as one of those big-wig, know-it-all producers of Tarot history, documentary history. The newest and least of those still standing (and I will ever be the least - Old School is tough, I passed because the Professor was asleep, but I did get in on honest merits).

I've been to the mountaintop, I've seen the view, I know who's there and what's to be done. And the ONE THING that has to be done now, is to promote "Warburg School" methodology in Tarot (and in Europe generally). Documentary discoveries are made periodically, and sometimes in batches, like lately, but they can't start to answer the questions most people have about Tarot - barring the sudden discovery of the designer's notes, or something close to that.

We know the reasons for the great divide between Europe and the USA - and the UK in sharing the same language, if not exactly the same isolation - in terms of iconographic studies: the Wars, particularly WWII. It was primarily because of the migrations of the great German theorists, Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, and Ernst Gombrich - and the latter twos' turning to English as their primary language. And, of course, Tarot cards - popular art - were not exactly the kind of thing they had in mind in the "Warburg School".

But now it is, and Michael Hurst is the first to try to integrate Warburg School methodology - i.e. as if he had studied under the masters Panofsky and Gombrich - to the study of Tarot. Okay, he's the second - Gertrude Moakley was the first, and she really did seek guidance from Panofsky... but she lacked the other leg of Warburg School study, the documentary basis, and the synthesis necessary, which Dummett provided.

So yes, you are a producer of the iconography (or "iconology") of Tarot, and from my POV, having seen what there is to see, this is the next necessary step in the discipline, in the field as it exists now.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:... ONE THING that has to be done now, is to promote "Warburg School" methodology in Tarot (and in Europe generally). Documentary discoveries are made periodically, and sometimes in batches, like lately, but they can't start to answer the questions most people have about Tarot - barring the sudden discovery of the designer's notes, or something close to that.

Yeah and, of course, the sporadic nature of directly-relevant new finds is one of the big reasons why Tarot history seems boring. Even finds like those promoted in the last few months, which seem really exciting to some of us, only change our focus or emphasis or assumed probabilities a bit. They don't change the broad outlines of the subject.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:We know the reasons for the great divide between Europe and the USA - and the UK in sharing the same language, if not exactly the same isolation - in terms of iconographic studies: the Wars, particularly WWII. It was primarily because of the migrations of the great German theorists, Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, and Ernst Gombrich - and the latter twos' turning to English as their primary language. And, of course, Tarot cards - popular art - were not exactly the kind of thing they had in mind in the "Warburg School".

But now it is, and Michael Hurst is the first to try to integrate Warburg School methodology - i.e. as if he had studied under the masters Panofsky and Gombrich - to the study of Tarot. Okay, he's the second - Gertrude Moakley was the first, and she really did seek guidance from Panofsky... but she lacked the other leg of Warburg School study, the documentary basis, and the synthesis necessary, which Dummett provided.

So yes, you are a producer of the iconography (or "iconology") of Tarot, and from my POV, having seen what there is to see, this is the next necessary step in the discipline, in the field as it exists now.

Yes, it's easy to talk in generalities about "the meaning of Tarot", but to take a particular deck and attempt what the Warburg guys did with a work of art, analyzing the subject matter and composition in sufficient detail to explain the design, is a serious challenge. It is no small matter that extremely knowledgeable people like Dummett, Berry, and Pratesi seem to have thrown up their hands, while most of those who dispute them offer recycled Masonic fantasies or meta-historical theories about Frazer, Campbell, and Jung.

(Frazer and Campbell and Jung -- oh my!

Best regards,
Michael

We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.

nice to meet you. ... :-) ... and I hope, you might find a little more time for the hobby Trionfi cards.

... we profited from an older article of you, where you showed the Baldini Magician Fools in context of the Rosenwald Magician Fool. It accompanied the production of this article ... http://trionfi.com/rosenwald-tarocchi-sheet

This was a good observation, and I personally think, that it has some deeper consequences on the evolutionary theory of Trionfi card development (... :-) ... which, as I know, is not your favor)

****************

About the Arne Jönssen project (which you discussed at your page) ... http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.de/
... the last contact ended in in a no-reply experience. His earlier relative short article (1998) was translated in English (I saw it in the web somewhere once; I don't remember, where). The article of 1998 appeared in context of a Detlev Hoffmann production, and Detlev Hoffmann is more or less (according a recent contact) occupied with activities outside of playing card interests, and this possibly already since 10 years.
Well ... IPCS had a member loss and other big names have gotten older and one doesn't know, if they come back or not.
If one wishes to improve the Johannes of Rheinfelden text situation, one likely has to arrange a sort of translation oneself.
Jönssen had found all 4 text versions and had them (I assume as copies) for his use. Well, it's nasty, to repeat the work, which another already did, again. But the other side of the story is: the text is a "missing puzzle piece".

robert wrote:There are huge differences. We have a TINY membership, and TINY traffic compared to Aeclectic. Thousands of people look at threads there.

Traffic may be sparse compared with Aeclectic, but content here is denser, fairly uncluttered and therefore more easily accessible. It seems there are always non-members browsing here who simply come to read and aren't interested in commenting - the mostly lengthy posts packed with research results and references are almost certainly intimidating to many.

I think AT is overmoderated - so many vibrant and interesting members have disappeared over the years. Even I (yes, me!) had a post removed a month or so ago because '...somebody used it as a jumping off point to attack another member.' I had dared to suggest (very politely) that AC was human and that therefore there might just be an element of 'Do What You Will' in his 'Do What Thou Wilt.'

I'm not sure about a Beginners' Forum here - after all we have the Unicorn Terrace and Bianca's Garden - both fairly relaxed places to browse and comment or ask questions. A locked thread with a beautifully clear, concise and friendly History of the Tarot: What We've Learned So Far might be useful to have - RLG's marvellous post on the Ur Tarot could begin it.